Ruffians Page 4

  The governor's face blanched, and Humphry chuckled as he left the office. The next day, he was named as that most outstanding citizen who would be recommended as the owner for the NFL's Birmingham franchise.

  Owning a football team seemed to be what Humphry had always needed in his life. He loved the constant publicity. Would he build a new stadium? What would he name the team? Who would be the coach? Which players would he pick in the upcoming draft? These were the questions that filled headlines on not only the sports pages in Birmingham, but on the front page as well. A day did not go by when the Lyles name wasn't mentioned in the Birmingham paper, and not a week when it wasn't mentioned in USA Today. Humphry put his financial machine on autopilot. The Birmingham Ruffians became his life.

  His sense of power was unprecedented. This was a southern town, and football was king.

  "I want to keep the team, Mama," Humphry said quietly after the coffee was served. "I like it. It's what I want to do."

  "If you want my advice," Beatrice Lyles responded after a heavy sigh, "not that you do, if you did, you wouldn't have bought this team, but if you want it, I'll tell you what I've always told you. What have I always told you?"

  "Oh, Mama, you've told me a lot of things."

  "Well, what have I always said about getting to the top?"

  Humphry counted off on his fingers as he spoke, "Means justify ends, victors write the history, nothing more powerful than money, nice guys finish last. . ."

  "No, no, no. Not that. What have I always told you about the people who work for you? What do they have to be?"

  "The best."

  "And . . . what else?"

  "And . . . they have to be just as ruthless and just as hungry as you are, otherwise they're dead weight."

  Beatrice Lyles smacked her hands together, "That's what I wanted to hear. That's your problem with your team. The people who run it are dead weight. You don't know anything about football."

  "I know some things."

  "Well, you know what I mean. But what do you know about computer chips? Nothing there either, but that Micro Future company paid for the house in St. Barths. Same thing here. Get the best. You've got the money, get the best."

  "So you don't think I should sell it?"

  "I think that you should have never bought it, but you did. Now I think you should show people why you are who you are. Isn't that why we're sitting here instead of doing the dishes?"

  After dinner, Humphry took a long walk around the grounds of the estate. He agreed with his mother. The staff he had was dead weight. He didn't know football, but he knew what productivity should look like. As he passed a gurgling Italian fountain, Humphry thought about a message he'd seen go across his desk the previous week. It was from a man named Vance White. The name hadn't meant a thing to Humphry, until two days ago when he read the man's name in the paper. White had been a successful college coach at Texas State. In five short years he had taken a struggling program to four straight bowl appearances and two years ago to a national championship. But it seemed an NCAA investigation had uncovered some recruiting violations that left Texas State on probation and Vance White without a job.

  Humphry's mouth erupted into a grin. White might be just the answer. He was obviously a man who knew how to win, and he was a man who knew how to bend a few rules to get there quickly. Humphry would call White tomorrow. There would be no more laughing at Humphry Lyles. There would be no more ridicule. His team would win. He would find a way, and he would succeed. He didn't need to walk any longer, so he returned to his own room.

  Vance White slapped dust off his pants with the brim of his hat before placing it back over his iron-gray crew cut. He gazed across the flat desert at the distant hills. Only an occasional tree broke the monotony of the immediate landscape, but to him it was beautiful. He had made enough money from his success as a football coach to buy this small ranch near the Mexican border. South Texas was where he had grown up and South Texas was where he swore he'd always return. Since it was certainly possible that he had been permanently retired from coaching, this was the only natural place for him to come. He spat out a wad of chewed tobacco, turned his horse, and headed for the distant homestead. The morning sun was now bright, and he knew his wife would have breakfast waiting for him.

  He led his horse into the barn and growled, "Chico. You rub her down good or I'll skin your ass with my teeth."

  The young Mexican looked deferentially to the ground and took the horse from White. As he strode across the dirt to his house, he spotted a large black beetle. He walked over to the insect and crushed it under the heel of his boot. As he was trying to scrape his heel clean on a stone, his wife came out on the porch. Dusty wind whipped her hair.

  "Vance," she said in a heavy southern drawl, "there's a Humphry Lyles on the phone for you, saying somethin' about an interview in Birmingham."

  White looked up from his boot. A smile broke out across his craggy weatherbeaten face.

  Humphry Lyles wasn't a man to wait. He had one of his private jets pick Vance White up the very next morning at a remote airstrip near White's ranch. By four o'clock in the afternoon, a limousine had delivered the coach to the front entrance of the Lyles estate. A butler led White to the library. The walls were adorned with exquisite oil paintings and rare books. Lyles sat at a desk at the far end of the room. A blaze burned in the ornate fireplace behind him. White was impressed, but he had something of his own to impress Lyles with. He set a fresh copy of Sports Illustrated down on the leather blotter in front of Humphry before he shook the owner's outstretched hand. The cover was an intensely stern picture of White's face. The caption read: WHAT NEXT FOR VANCE WHITE?

  The two men shook hands. Humphry looked down at the magazine. He felt a wave of excitement. This was something that he could relate to. This was tangible even to a man who knew little of sports.

  "I'm impressed, Vance," Lyles said.

  "Maybe next week's issue will have a picture of you and I together with the answer," he added.

  White looked impassive, but his scalp twitched slightly. The NFL would be his only chance to continue coaching. No college would hire him after the NCAA scandal at Texas State. NFL jobs were few and far between, especially for college coaches with no NFL experience.

  "I've read quite a bit about you in the past few days," Lyles said, "everything, in fact, and if you're half of what they say you are, then you're the man for my team."

  White nodded, still containing what he felt inside.

  "Let me tell you what I want," Lyles said, "and then I want to hear from you if you've got what I need. ... I want to win, and I want to win now. I don't want promises of success down the road and building for the future. I want results and I want them this coming season."

  Still White was impassive.

  "I also want you to know," Lyles continued, "that I wouldn't ask for fast results if I wasn't willing to back you up in every way possible. I mean with money, and resources, and connections. In short, I'll provide whatever you think you need in order to win immediately, and I'm not bothered by stretching the rules either. You should know Vance, that I look at your little problems at Texas State as a positive reflection on you. I want a man who is focused enough to do whatever it takes."

  The two men talked for over two hours before they emerged from the library. By that time Humphry Lyles had hired Vance White and come to a verbal agreement about his terms of employment.

  "I hope you'll stay with us for some dinner before heading back to Texas?" said Lyles, who was intoxicated with the progress he had made toward his goal.

  "I'd like that, Mr. Lyles," White replied.

  Humphry led White through the spacious mansion and up a wide set of stairs to the second floor dining room. Beatrice Lyles was already at her place when the two men entered. Her eyes widened questioningly at the sight of White.

  "Mama," Humphry said, presenting his coach, "I want to introduce you to Vance White, the Ruffians' new head coach."

&
nbsp; At the same time he gently placed the Sports Illustrated magazine down in front of his mother. When her typically pursed lips parted ever so slightly, Humphry knew that he had impressed her. Daintily she extended her limp and corpulent hand.

  "Mr. White," she said, "this is a pleasure."

  Clay knew that to be a great football player you had to run. He was in training, so he was up early in the morning. He loved to run in his old neighborhood and would drive home all the way from the Northern campus for that reason alone. He had a favorite course that never varied. He had never been able to finish the 2.2 mile course in under thirteen minutes, but today he promised himself he would. He started out fast from his parents' driveway and ran past the Murphys' front yard, where he used to play ball. He cruised downhill past streets named Ibis and Finch, picking up speed. The cold morning air began to burn his lungs and throat. By the time he could see the back of the shopping center, the sun lit the sky, an orange sliver in the east. Clay pumped his arms and legs, now heavy, almost numb from the effort of the run. It seemed like hours since he started. He looked at the stop watch he held clutched in his left hand. He was halfway at six thirty-five.

  He needed a little more. He thought about the NFL. He thought about winning. Winning was everything. "Be a champion. Be the best," he told himself.

  Finally, there was the stop sign. In the wintertime as a kid, that where he and his friends would sneak up on cars, grab onto their bumpers when they stopped, and get pulled down the snowy street. He looked at his watch: twelve thirty-eight.

  He had two blocks to go. He felt a rush, like an electric jolt, and a deep desire to beat his record. Now the pain was great. It filled his body. His mind was swimming and his body told him to stop. He wouldn't. Sweat flew from his face and hands. His body shook with each stride. Harder and harder, but it all seemed to be in slow motion. He could see the street sign for Kiwi Path that marked his finish line. His foot hit the imaginary line. He stopped the watch and geared down with a steady flap flap flap from his sneakers.

  He fought with dizziness and staggered to remain upright, trying to hold up his head to get more oxygen into his lungs. The watch read twelve fifty-eight. He was in the best shape of his life.

  Chapter TWO

  HUMPHRY LYLES LEFT NO ONE GUESSING AS to his wealth. He wore Armani suits with two-hundred-dollar ties and twelve-hundred-doi- lar shoes. On his wrist, he wore a Carrier panther, and his nails were carefully manicured. Likewise, his office exuded affluence. It was spacious. One sixteen-foot wall was lined from floor to ceiling with leather- bound books. The furniture was all dark wood and leather. It was all Century. Another wall was almost entirely windows and looked out over a practice field. Two French doors in the center of the room opened onto a brick terrace that afforded an unobstructed view of the action below.

  Opposite Humphry's large desk was a marble fireplace. Above it hung an impressionistic painting of a storefront in a small southern railroad town. The painting had been commissioned by Humphry. In the center of the darkening shops, back lit by the orange glow of dusk, was a tiny barber shop. Shadowy figures made their way down the sidewalk toward home, and a dull yellow light shone in the window above the shop. It was a beautiful painting and it seemed to hold the viewer's eye against his will. None found it more distracting than Humphry himself, and there were times when he considered having it replaced.

  It was this same painting that was holding his attention when Vance White entered. White looked strangely out of place in his black sweatsuit and gray baseball cap, but he seemed at ease. He sauntered in and sat himself comfortably in an overstuffed chair that faced Humphry's desk.

  "Morning, Mr. Lyles," said White.

  "Good morning, Vance. Coffee?"

  White shook his head.

  "I didn't want to have this talk with you until you've had plenty of time to get used to the facilities," said Lyles. "Like I said to you before, I have been successful because I know who to hire and I know how to let them do their job."

  "Well, it'll take me a few more weeks to finish getting my staff together. Let's see ... I want some more free weights in the weight room, and I think we should start putting off-season incentive packages into the contracts of all our players. Besides those things, everything else is fine, just fine."

  "Those things aren't a problem. Well," said Humphry, rising to signal an end to their meeting, "I just wanted to make sure, like I said, that you have everything you need."

  White seemed to hesitate as he rose.

  "Yes, I think everything is fine . . ."

  "Well, that's great," said Humphry. "I want a winning football team. I've got more money than I could ever spend, so don't hesitate if there's anything at all."

  "Mr. Lyles," White said, "I have something that I think you could help me with . . ."

  "Sit down, Vance, sit down. I didn't mean to rush you out. Go right ahead," said Humphry, holding out his hands and sitting down himself.

  "Well, Mr. Lyles, I guess I should ask you something first . . . Let's say you've got a Thoroughbred to run in the derby and it comes up lame . . ."

  Humphry nodded for him to continue.

  "O. K., let's say you know that horse can win, but you might have to give him a little help . . . like a shot of Novocain and a little hit of Adrenalin ... and let's say, just for the hell of it, that you could rig it so no one would know . . . would you do it?"

  Humphry laughed quietly before he said, "Vance, do you really think I could get to where I am today if I had any qualms about sacrificing everything for success? I have a saying that ethics is for law professors who don't have to live in the real world, and it's a good thing for them that they don't."

  White leaned forward, tilting back his hat and resting his forearms on his knees. "Mr. Lyles, I expected that's just what you'd say, but I wanted to be sure. You see, there are some things that can be had out there that can get players ready to play faster and better than everyone else. Well, probably the less said the better . . . but the fact is that if I could have access to some cash, well, it would make the whole thing one hell of a lot easier."

  Humphry held up his hand. "You're absolutely right. I don't really know what it is specifically that you're talking about, but I don't want to know about it, Vance. What I said I meant. Now, how much of this ca^ will you be needing?"

  White cleared his throat, "Uh-uh-hum, well, Mr. Lyles, initially it could require as much as fifty thousand dollars, then some more down the line if everything goes well . . ."

  Humphry picked up the phone on his desk. "Wendy," he said to his personal secretary, "get me Miles Lofton of First South on the line."

  Humphry hung up and sat silently. Ten seconds later, the phone rang.

  "Miles? Yes, how are you? Yes, I need a safe-deposit box. I need fifty thousand dollars in cash put in there, and I want you to make arrangements for my head coach, Vance White, to have access. I don't need to tell you that this is a very private matter, Miles. . . . Thank you, Miles, you too."

  Humphry hung up the phone and smiled at White.

  After a moment White said, "That's it?"

  "That's it, Vance. You just see Miles Lofton at First South's main offices downtown. If you need more than that, let me know."

  Vance White stood and smiled ever so slightly. It was the first smile Humphry had seen on his coach's face.

  "Mr. Lyles, this is going to work out very well."

  The Ruffians organization was run out of a large two-level brick-and- glass building in the town of Oak Point, well outside Birmingham city limits. The top floor held the management and coaches' offices, and the bottom level was devoted to locker rooms, meeting rooms, training facilities, and a weight room. In the center of the upstairs offices was a large paneled boardroom. Much of the paneling was covered by charts and bulletin boards. Different-colored three-by-five index cards were pinned to the boards. On each card was a brief profile of a football player. The higher on the board a card was pinned, the more valuable the
player.

  A new coaching staff like the Ruffians had two important tasks at hand. First, they had to determine just which offensive and defensive schemes they would be using. Next, they had to fit their existing players into those schemes and figure out where they would draft or trade in order to fill the holes left by inadequate personnel. Both these taSks i resulted in long, drawn-out meetings that went on day after day.

  This night, like most, the coaches sat around the long table in the center of the boardroom. The air was filled with cigar and cigarette smoke, and the men's eyes were all bloodshot. It was one-thirty in the morning, and they had been in this personnel meeting since eight in the morning the day before. Vance White dropped his burning cigarette into his coffee cup with a hiss.

  "Anything else?" he said, knowing everyone wanted to go home.

  "I have something I want to add."

  The voice was not familiar. Most of the men in the room had worked together in the past, and they were used to each other's tired, rough tones. This voice was young, almost fresh. It was as though its speaker had not undergone the grueling effects of the seventeen-and-a-half-hour meeting.

  Every eye turned toward Gavin Collins. He was the new guy on the block, the coach with the least experience. He was thirty-five and neat and handsome, and he looked more like a player than a coach. He was also the defensive coordinator. The others might have wondered at someone so junior holding such a position, except for the obvious fact that Collins was black.

  White's eyes narrowed at Collins, who sat rigid and calm with his hands folded neatly on the table in front of him.

  "Go ahead, Gavin," said White.

  "Last week we came to the decision that we would run a shifting front on defense. I have looked carefully at the existing personnel and the plan-B players available, and the one thing that we don't have is a defensive lineman that has the size to match up physically with a strong-side offensive tackle. We need someone with the athletic ability to slide out and play over the tight end when in certain blitzes he might actually have man-to-man coverage."